


In Heavier Air

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Avvar Culture and Customs, Avvar Inquisitor, Cultural Differences, F/F, Fictional Religion & Theology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-10 00:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10425714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: She came down from the mountains late that autumn with a staff in her hand and a great roll of furs on her back for sale. She was the Bear-Woman, Ylva Ulvasdotten, strong in body, sharp in mind. She was then past her thirty-seventh winter, and of an auspicious age. By the count of the Hold it was the tenth winter since the Dark Sky, and the news from the Dwarves and from the Lowland traders was all of war.The Inquisitor is nothing Cassandra could ever have expected.It seems as though it may work out anyway.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lafillechanceuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lafillechanceuse/gifts).



> Dear lafillechanceuse - happy wintersend! I was so fascinated by your prompt about religion, and I hope you enjoy the end result. :)

She came down from the mountains late that autumn with a staff in her hand and a great roll of furs on her back for sale. She was the Bear-Woman, Ylva Ulvasdotten, strong in body, sharp in mind. She was then past her thirty-seventh winter, and of an auspicious age. By the count of the Hold it was the tenth winter since the Dark Sky, and the news from the Dwarves and from the Lowland traders was all of war.

What is a Lowlander war to the Mountain People? If the armies of the Lowlanders march across the Frostbacks, it may be something. If the fields are laid waste and the crops can't be raided for or traded for, it may be something.

They chose from the bravest and the most restless, and Ylva Ulvasdotten was both. She tired of the business of quieting the dead, and she tired of the ordinary hunt. She grew reckless, they said, and recklessness is dangerous in the killing months of winter. Let her go to the Lowlander Haven as an ordinary trader, and learn what might be learnt of petty wars. Let her see those other lives, and relearn the value of the Hold.

 

 

 

"The woman is Avvar," Leliana said. "Their magic is—strange, is it not? Who knows what they may attempt. What they may well already have done."

Even pale and unconscious, stripped of her furs, the woman seemed large. It was difficult, Cassandra found, to even look at her left hand where it lay on the thin grey blanket. It had been a strong solid hand, to judge by the other: heavy-boned and sinewy, the calluses showing the pattern of heavy use. The left now was sickeningly hollow, the green that mirrored the sky outside gouging through it. It made Cassandra think of superstitious stories of women who were trees: see them from behind and they were hollowed out, bark-rough.

Ridiculous stories. Pointless ones.

"We must be careful," she said. Looked at Leliana, as pale as the unconscious woman but with high colour dashed across her cheekbones in a way that looked unnatural. Leliana's hands shook as she reached for her quill, for her papers. Cassandra watched her blot her first letter, the scratch of the quill on parchment crackling too loudly, the pressure all wrong.

Everyone was pale and shaken here. To be stripped of everything in a moment—

She and Leliana orbited an empty space, and sooner or later they would realise nothing held them to their courses, no Divine, no person who—

Never mind.

Perhaps Leliana's lover at least lived yet, in some unknown place.

Perhaps faith would be enough.

The elf returned. Solas, which seemed to Cassandra a strange name, known only to her as a place on a map. A strange man altogether, as strange as the Avvar woman, as solemn. Oh, he claimed that he knew the trick to saving the world from the ruin of the sky—but how—but why? Yes, Cassandra had met strange magic in her days. But not this. Nothing of this kind.

"She will awaken soon," he said. He didn't look at either of them as he said it—only frowned down at the woman's face, as though looking for something. Did he find it? "She will be confused. But stable, for the moment."

"Leave us," Cassandra said.

"I would advise you not to kill her," the man said. "If you don't wish to see the death of the world, that is. I cannot claim to know your desires. As I have told you, she is the key."

"You can't know that," Leliana said. "You guess."

Solas looked at her.

"We will discuss this matter," Cassandra said. " _In private._ "

"I see."

"Go to the valley," Leliana said. "Be of use."

The man shrugged. Left them.

"We will have answers," Leliana said. "I will not say it to the man, but I believe he may be right. Send soldiers down to secure her. I must dispatch this message."

 

 

 

Pain and light. Darkness and relief. Pain again.

Stripped to an unfamiliar uniform, the fabric coarse and scratching, she shivered in the dark. They watched her, those Lowlanders. They waved their pointless little swords at her as though that meant anything to a mage.

"Sigfrost's _hairy fucking arse,_ " she spat. "Fuck! What did I do to you—Lady—"

To fall forwards onto her hands wrenched at her arms, dug the solid cuffs that bound her into her exposed skin. Set the Lowlanders who surrounded her starting forward.

She grit her teeth, bile on the tongue.

The Lady screamed above. It echoed through her, although she couldn't see the sky to read the omens: the sky had come to her.

It lived in her hand. How? An impossibility. A curse.

The Augur would laugh himself sick. Oh, Ylva wants to see the Lowlands even though her duty is to the higher heavens—! See how she enjoys that heavier Lowland air.

Look at her now.

The women who came to her demanded to know—what happened, why—?

She had nothing. No memory. No words. The spirits only cried, and cried, and cried. Cried in her head all the way to the Lowlanders' ruined temple. Her magic felt strange in her: vibrated like a plucked string, like a fishing-line with an unseen catch at its end, a catch too big to pull in.

It was only when the rift in the temple fell that the Lady lay a gentle hand across her, and the whining tone of her body was stilled; the unseen monster tore free, and the fishing-line went slack. Ylva, also, went slack: was released for a moment into a deep quiet, restfully close to death.

 

 

 

Wake up.

Wake up.

Wake up to heavy banners and clenched hands pressed to chests. Wake up to blaring horns and thin straight swords, to marching and drums. To a hundred stories about you waiting to be told—none of them in your own voice.

Wake—

And Ylva Ulvasdotten stood upon the steps of the holy house and watched the banners and the soldiers and the wildness of the Lowlander's faces, and felt the stories already beginning to unfurl around her.

Here was Cassandra, always straight-backed—Cassandra the Unbowed. Here was the Raven-Woman with her burning hair. The Commander, always fading when silent. They dreamt, all three, of some new world—or of an old one, restored.

Which was it to be?

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The Lowlanders who named her a Herald didn't know how to dress. Haven was mild, the air soft in the throat. The lake was frozen but cutting a fishing-hole was an easy thing, the ice thick enough for stability but not so thick as to be inconvenient. Ylva stripped underlayers from her clothing and the cold still didn't kiss her skin—but the lowlanders shivered.

Of course they shivered. Bare throats and nothing under their trousers. Leather gloves, not skins with the fur turned inward but rather fine and heavily worked, light as the decorative wrap for a knife-sheath.

"You're building a fighting strength."

Cassandra looked up. Ylva leant herself against the frame of the door, the cool stone, the smooth wood. Arms crossed.

"And you have an opinion," Cassandra said. Straightened, closing her god-book with a heavy thud, so that dust danced in the lamplight.

A moment of still consideration. To Cassandra, Ylva seemed unnaturally still in her pose against the doorframe. A captured image—a heathen in the Chantry, with only the flickering green light of her divine hand in motion. Ylva seemed not to notice the strange shift of Cassandra's gaze; her own was very level.

"They'll fight better," Ylva said, "if they learn to use heavy gloves and keep their dexterity. They'll fight better if their throats don't freeze. They'll fight _better_ if they take proper hoods beneath their pretty metal hats and if their boots are strong enough to keep the feeling in their feet. Winter isn't interested in Lowland uniforms. Or does your Maker bless your fingers so they don't stiffen?"

They stared again at one another; it was Cassandra who looked away, with a snort of disgust.

"It would be sufficient to say we must improve our equipment. Thank you, I am aware."

Ylva laughed. It was a startling sound: nobody in the fledgeling Inquisition had yet heard it. Cassandra looked back at her sharply, and saw that for one moment Ylva's smile was broad, showing her teeth.

"Listen to me," she said, "and you might survive."

"Maker save me," Cassandra said. "Why do you think I am the person to talk to? Ought you not ask Cullen about matters of military strength? You are—very strange."

"I'm asking you."

"And the reason for that is—?"

"You threatened to execute me."

These things Cassandra could not then understand—narrowed her eyes, tightened her mouth.

"I see."

"Good," Ylva said. "Fight well. May you triumph over your book."

The door closed behind her.

"Was that," Cassandra said to its elderly timbers, "a joke?"

 

 

 

In the slow turn of the year which carried them deeper into winter, Ylva had taken Cassandra into the field enough times—taken her across the Hinterlands, breaking the backs of bears with savage joy and making offerings of their skulls, their bones—the land offers and the land demands. Taken her to the pointless glitter of the heart of Orlais and watched her spine stiffen—further than ever, further than in combat with the Chancellor, further than when Ylva needled and tested. 

It was the mire this time—a place so dead the rites were left undone. Bodies in piles and bodies pressed into the corners of huts, bodies face-down in the water—too putrid or diseased for even the birds to take, it seemed. They burnt fragrant herbs in the scout's camp, and the people of the Inquisition stayed close to the fire.

"It's Avvar who took our people," Scout Harding said. Her gaze shifted uneasily. "Is that—a problem?"

"A problem?" Ylva asked.

"Well, I mean—they're Avvar, you're Avvar—is there some kind of politics thing?"

"What do they want?"

"To fight you. As the Herald of Andraste."

"Hah!" Ylva said. "Yes, there's a politics thing. Let's go and be political. Bring your biggest weapons."

Here: the mire spreading its murky waterways in the rain, inhaling, growing. Freezing and thawing. Wet snow and frozen rain, soon drawn down into the muddy ground.

Here: the restless dead with heavy limbs, hands pulling their shoulders down towards the mud as spirits force their heads to rise. Things that creak as they move, the slow grind of cartilage without flesh to pad it, the scrape of bones against bones under tattered skin.

How anxious Josephine would be—both Cassandra and Ylva thought it, with different inflections. But Josephine was in Haven, and all that Sera had to offer was general disgust, and the Iron Bull wasn't saying anything.

A miserable place, and a miserable job, in short.

"Bad taste in places to camp," Ylva said, severing the head of a corpse from the body with a heavy sweep of her staff—a move that clamped her teeth down on the last word, the effort required pulling a grunt from her throat. "Showing off. Stupid. Some idiot son searching for a quick path to power."

"Not wrong there, Boss," the Iron Bull said. "Crap, this place is the worst."

"Don't say that." Sera, balancing stubbornly on rotten beams, terrified of the water. "Just means she'll go find somewhere even shittier."

What a strange collection they were. Qunari and Avvar, and Sera all stubbornly and aggressively disinterested in the spiritual or the philosophical—and Cassandra, burning simultaneously with doubt and conviction.

It wasn't long before they met the Watcher.

Here, again: strangeness. Signs drawn on palms and scuffed into the dirt. Gestures to the sky and to the water. Quick words, the dialect shifted away from the common Lowland sounds and tones.

She is foreign, the others thought—Sera and Cassandra, at least. The theory of it collided with the immediacy of it and turned the person of the Herald of Andraste over in their minds. Who knew what the Bull thought—how he weighed her.

"Yes," Ylva said. "The Lady has—"

She turned and saw the three of them, and she fell silent. A moment of silence. She shuttered herself.

"The scouts live," she said. "Move out. Farewell, Sky Watcher."

"Watcher," the Sky Watcher replied, craftsman to craftsman. "Keep your people's feet out of the water."

"Don't need telling," Sera muttered.

The mud sucked at their boots, even on the paths.

"Tell me truly," Cassandra said, when the Sky Watcher's still form had faded into the dim mist. " _Is_ it a problem, that we're going to fight your people? Oh, I know what you said to Scout Harding, but—"

"But it wouldn't be the first time someone lied?" Ylva's laughter was a sharp bark. "They're not my kin. They took your Inquisition's people to make a point, but the real test of strength is whether they can hold them. They know that and I know that."

"Who were—?"

"Haven is my Hold now," Ylva said. The abrupt shift into sourness was evident to any listener—Cassandra winced at it.

"I don't understand."

"Of course you don't. Oh—this is where the scouts thought a camp could go. Don't think they were wrong about the ground. Wait."

Ylva surveyed the ring of stone, the limited access through constructed doorways—the ground within it was indeed firmer, a little higher than the surrounding mire. Shaped—by who? For what?

The rest of them watched her as she paced it: reckoned the steps from side to side, stretched her hand up to measure the height of the doorways.

"Bull," she called, finding the largest too high—vaulted, when he came to her, up onto his back so that he grunted and staggered. She was a very large woman, despite her agility.

"Little warning, Boss."

"You can take it," she said dismissively, and eased the weight on his shoulders by grabbing the lintel that was now within her reach.

Sera sniggered—her first moment of genuine delight since she understood about the bodies in the water. "I _bet_ he can."

"What—" Cassandra said, for neither the first nor the last time.

On the lintel, Ylva found what she was looking for—satisfying sets of gouges in the stone, the figures of a long-lost world: here is the circle, here is the place for life. The Son of this other Hold hadn't chosen his roost at random then—had perched himself in the midst of the ruins of dead tribes.

She dropped herself back down to the ground, and patted the Bull on the back with a gesture both he and Cassandra felt to be rather condescending—although neither of them minded.

"Yes," she said. "We'll camp here. Send for the scouts and I'll see to the offering."

They disliked the offerings, all three of her companions—but it was only resignation, at this point, that hung between them. If there was to be a camp there was to be an offering—nobody could dissuade her from this practice.

Most unnerving on this occasion was one detail: that a spirit, for the first time, answered in a way they could understand.

 

 

 

Cassandra stood in the smaller door-passage, arms crossed—not leaning, as Ylva would do, but tall, holding her tension in her shoulders. On either side of the passage the rain flowed in heavy rivulets, settling around the bases of the stones, making pools for their feet where the ground bent towards them.

"So," Ylva said, "that went badly for you."

"For you, I should say." Cassandra turned, her face hard, fixed, like a statue. There was the woman who had interrogated Ylva in a dark basement—who had taken her from her kin. The strength of her was striking. "Dealing with spirits, Herald?"

"With gods," Ylva said easily. "Spirits to you, if you like. What of it? You pray, don't you? Bow your head and say holy words for your god-book."

"I do not," Cassandra began, and broke off with a frustrated groan. "That is _not_ how it works. You are no Andrastian, I am aware, but—the Maker—that is—he does not simply appear because one demands it. Only spirits and demons are so easily summoned."

"You don't speak to your Maker," Ylva said. "Are you _serious?_ "

She spoke with genuine curiosity: found this idea to be nearly beyond conception. 

"Entirely," Cassandra said.

"A captured god? Bound?"

"As though anyone could," Cassandra said, and closed her mouth abruptly. She saw in her head a golden city turning black—she saw dragons and demons and ancient power-mad Magisters building piles from the bodies of slaves. "No. The Maker is not one of your spirits. But in his way, I believe, he speaks to us—to you."

Read the omens in the skies. Feel the heavens meet the ground in your hand.

"I doubt that," Ylva said.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Who could have been surprised had Ylva gone to the mages? A mage herself, and no friend to the Chantry—this argument she and Cassandra had repeated until it took the smooth-worn form of habit, although their acquaintance was at that time not long. A rolling resentment, robbed of its sharpest edges, although it sat heavy still in the stomach. How does the Maker work? Why does he make these choices?

What does the Lady want, that she would throw her supplicant into this book-bound world?

But here:

Ylva, striding through Haven with all the conviction which would later lead her to the unlikely role of Inquisitor, came to Cassandra on the improvised training grounds. She took a moment to observe: Cassandra's stance, her force. The training dummy bent on its pole under a well-placed blow.

Ylva whistled, a carefully controlled tone, the artistry of a call-signal. Laughed at herself for it. "You'd do the Hold proud in a trial, Seeker. A force of nature."

"Flattery," Cassandra said, startling. Despite herself, she warmed very slightly.

"Hmm. You think I want to bed you?"

"I think nothing."

Ylva's mouth twitched. Cassandra could not know that Ylva was more amused in her presence than anyone else's; would perhaps have taken offence had she known.

"That's a shame," Ylva said.

Cassandra snorted, glanced quickly away; turned, for a moment, to look out over the frozen lake until she felt herself balanced again.

"You came to speak with me with some more significant business than flattery, I presume."

"We're going to seek concord with your Templars," Ylva said. "I thought you might enjoy taking part."

"I—what?"

"The Templars. That _is_ the right word, I'm pretty sure. I've heard enough of it this last month."

"Why?"

"I thought you'd be overjoyed," Ylva said—still rather provocatively amused, as far as Cassandra was concerned.

"It is a wise choice," Cassandra said.

"But?"

"You are a mage. A—foreign—mage. I did not imagine you would take kindly to the arm of the Chantry."

"I'm not worried they'll lock me up, if that's what you mean. You've already tried that."

"You will never stop bringing that up, will you?"

"It was admirable."

Cassandra shook her head, although she was pleased—because she was pleased—Ylva had seldom pleased her, in these larger decisions. In the field, perhaps—in moments of kind practicality—

"I seek control," Ylva said. "What do you teach these Lowland mages of control? Your Templars disrespect the balance of the world, but they are less dangerous for the moment. Their power may be drawn on. And I would know what your Lord Seeker has done. You were shocked by him."

"Ah, there we are," Cassandra said. "I am offended again. _This_ balance is restored."

"I think you know I'm right," Ylva said, and Cassandra did—would hardly have been offended had Ylva been entirely wrong, entirely easy to dismiss.

"I know very little of you."

"You like very little of me," Ylva said. "I'm sure you'll learn to dislike more of me in time. Come. Our conspiracy of Elders is waiting for us."

"Elders."

"Very young Elders."

Cassandra—wonder of wonders—laughed.

Quieted herself quickly.

How was she to know what to make of Ylva? No way to unravel it. She could only follow, baffled and forever on the edge of alarm.

 

 

 

One must take one's victories with one's losses. Yes: there were the Templars, marching into Haven with their banners still flying. Ser Barris was a good man to take the lead, Cassandra thought—Ylva must have thought so too, had spent a night talking urgently with him in flickering light of the fire before her tent. She had gestured Cassandra over, pointed to a place where she was meant to sit—kept both of these Chantry persons in a state of polite bafflement as they unravelled the meaning of her strange words. Yes: it was to be alliance.

"A Hold does not take another Hold prisoner," Ylva said. "No more than we would bind a spirit unwillingly. We will reach a concord or we will fight. You have the authority to negotiate terms of alliance, yes? Negotiate."

"The Avvar in the mire took prisoners," Cassandra said.

"People. An entire Hold is a different matter." Ylva shrugged. "Also, they're dead."

And here was the loss: a shadow of a boy, a wisp. He was no more than an unease on the edge of Cassandra's consciousness as they traversed the roads back to Haven, unseen but suspected, raising hairs on the back of her neck.

Only in Haven did he appear, and still he remained on the edge of the mind: easily lost, slipping from sight or from mind—slipping in and out of the world, as it seemed.

"He wants to help," Ylva said simply, and the boy nodded. "I trust our pact."

Solas watched the boy, and Varric also—from Cassandra's world he was largely absent, but the half-knowledge of him itched, angered. Wisdom and foolhardiness in one mind—how the Avvar toyed with the boundaries of worlds. The distinction in these days was a fine enough one already, the veil parting and shifting all too easily. What was the boy? Ylva knew, and Solas knew. Cassandra put the thought of what he might be from her mind—he made it easy for her to do so.

Besides, this was the last of their time in Haven: the last of the preparations for closing the breach, the last days of uneasy ignorance. Ylva looked to the skies for signs and disliked what she saw; she reached out to the small gods and the great ones for answers and disliked what she felt. But these were no clear omens. They spoke of danger, and gave no direction. It might be as bad to wait as to act. And once they had acted, there was enough to worry about besides one strange boy—

 

 

 

Here is a story not yet told: 

The Healer sat the foot of the mountain amidst the Lowland people, and they knew nothing. 

The Healer sat at the foot of the mountain and spoke, and in her words was the wisdom of Sigfrost. Had the Lady of the Skies not already chosen her? Did Korth the Mountain-Father not also shield her? 

How strong must she have been, that spirits would favour her so?

Here is a story told by the Lowlanders:

The Herald of Andraste called upon the Maker for strength; by His grace she pulled the mountain down upon His enemies, and by His grace she was spared to rise again.

Here is the moment:

"I swear on my mother's fucking name," Ylva Ulvasdotten said, "if you let me die now, Lady, I will damn well _refuse to pass on_."

"I swear on the strength of my spirit," Ylva Ulvasdotten said, "if you ever gave a shit about the Holds, Korth, you'll hear me _now_."

Oh, not aloud—it didn't have to be said aloud.

All she said aloud was:

"Oh, fuck you."

Cassandra was the last one to see her facing Corypheus, a small and distant figure, her bulk dwarfed by the looming red figure before her—the last one to see her standing tall before the mountain came down.

She is dead, Cassandra thought—she is dead, and we are doomed.

It was the second time she had thought this thought in recent months; the second time something she had placed her trust in had fallen; the second time someone she had found fascinating had—

But Cassandra was eminently practical in these things, and she had run by the safest ways she could find—she had helped the weak—she had paced and paced and paced, but only when the camp had been set.

 

 

 

And so it came to pass that the Herald or the Healer or the Bear-Woman from the Mountains rose again—with the blessing of the gods or the Maker or by her own furious strength.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

A Hold must have a Hold-Beast.

Not so strange that Haven had fallen, lacking one entirely. But Haven had not been Ylva's Hold to shape.

"You must guide them," Solas said. "Surely you see it."

"You won't make it across the mountains if I don't, that's certain." Ylva tilted her head back. Above them, the mountains crowded the sky into a narrow strip. In Korth's arms they were held, and at Hakkon's mercy they lived. "I'll take the omens come first light. If they're good, we'll make the offerings."

"Omens," Solas said. "Superstition."

"Sense," Ylva said. "You think there's no meaning to how a bird flies or how the wind turns?"

"I think it is beyond your skill to read any such thing, even—trained—as you are."

"Ah," Ylva said. "The dreamer doesn't understand. But you understand the offerings, I think."

"It is never wrong to make peace with the spirits of a place," Solas conceded. "An offering is proper. Yes. I advise you, however, to make it with discretion. These people do not understand the old ways. Your ways or mine. Your Lady Seeker—"

"Mine, is it?"

Solas shrugged.

"You have more dream-visions, dreamer? A fortress and a fortune in one night?"

"Have a care," Solas said. "We need the Chantry just now. Who is to say what it will do when _it_ no longer needs _us_? Cassandra would cage the mages once more, not seeing that—" He gestured, tsked. "No matter. You will do as you please, of course."

And it pleased Ylva to study the skies; it pleased Ylva to lay the entrails of a black wolf at an improvised prayer-stone, leaving the meat and the skin and the bones to the provisioners.

A Hold must have a Hold-Beast, and a Hold-Beast heard the wish: followed their caravan with blood in its nostrils, keeping a safe distance and eating of the offerings only once they moved on. And Ylva, looking out across the snow, saw that the same creature shadowed them day after day—and was pleased.

And indeed, they made her the Thane of the Hold, and called her Inquisitor, and the creature stood at the end of the stone bridge and scented the air—raised its head towards her as she held up the Inquisition's symbol-sword for the sake of the waiting people who now were hers to protect. Nobody saw it just then but her. It needed time, and time it took.

 

 

 

"Inquisitor," Cassandra said. She was breathless and irate, and in fact there was something of a commotion behind her. Ylva was glad to turn her way, away from Josephine's list of works and projects and allegedly necessary meetings. "Inquisitor!"

"Oh dear," Josephine said.

"Yes?"

"There seems to be a—a dracolisk of some sort. In the courtyard."

"Oh," Ylva said. "Good. It's come in. I'll go and see to it."

"You—expected this?"

"This is a Hold," Ylva said, by way of an answer—said it with such authority that it took the space of a full breath for Cassandra and Josephine to realise that the statement held no meaning they could discern and hurry after her.

It was a mountain dracolisk—a strong bony creature, snow-pale. It had cleared a considerable area in the courtyard as the occupants of the Hold struggled to come up with a suitable response to its presence, settling in the first instance for avoiding the teeth.

Ylva bowed to it.

" _What_ ," Cassandra said.

"If I could only make her be so courteous to the nobles," Josephine said faintly.

The dracolisk had shaken its head and then bobbed it in return, by accident or with purpose Cassandra could not have said. Ylva felt intent to the motion, and straightened. She turned her head as though to listen to some speech unheard by all others present, and then she shrugged her great shoulders.

"Perhaps we might take it to the stables," the Warden Blackwall said. "If it's staying."

"His name is Vassrygg," Ylva said. "He has the freedom of the Hold. It is his. You may not take him to the stables. He will take himself wherever he pleases. About your business."

In the uproar that followed, Vassrygg seemed quite calm—he stalked only over to the merchant's stalls, and bowed his jagged head to sniff for meat.

 

 

 

"Josephine will murder you," Cassandra said.

It was in a nook behind the prospective tavern that Ylva sat, testing the edges of her knives and adjusting the bindings. They seemed not to need the attention—it was a reflex, perhaps.

"It'd be good for her," she said, and her smirk when she looked up at Cassandra was infuriating—fluttered through Cassandra, leaving her hands tense with frustration. "No, I don't mean that. She's not one to dig the blade in herself. Wouldn't suit her. Leliana might like it."

"You are offering me suggestions for how to dispose of you in a satisfying manner."

"Your face is incredible," Ylva said serenely. "If someone wants to be the Inquisitor, they can fight me and be the Inquisitor. They don't. And Josephine doesn't need me to bow to people—she just wants me to. She's a storyteller, Seeker. And I'm a story they've never heard before. She'll make us feared or respected or whatever she pleases."

Cassandra sighed and lowered herself down onto the ground facing Ylva.

"I am trying to be furious at you," she said. "I should be even more furious at you now. You are as bad as Varric. You know exactly what you are doing."

"I am a humble barbarian," Ylva said. "Your Maker works in mysterious ways. Clearly he's very powerful if he can work through such a tool. It was a Chantry Sister who said that to the people from some Hold called Lydes, and they were very impressed by it."

"I assume that if you have gathered this much you are aware that it is in fact called a city."

"And?"

" _Inquisitor—_ "

"Ylva to you," Ylva said. She tipped her head back to the sky—she did this, Cassandra had noticed, in moments when she must gather her thoughts, buy a space to breathe, seek an answer.

Cassandra allowed her the moment. Allowed it also to herself, allowed herself to feel the confusion at how deeply amused by Ylva's turns of phrase and choice of inflection she found herself, again and again—oh, she did like to be made to laugh, the Seeker. Did not know how to admit it. Was not sure she had any desire to.

And Ylva sang, in the slow chanting tones they used in the South of Orlais:

_Hear now, Andraste, daughter of Brona,_  
_Spear-maid of Alamarr, to valiant hearts sing_  
_Of victory waiting, yet to be claimed from_  
_The steel-bond forgers of barren Tevene—_

Her voice was rough, and did not hold the notes well. She sang to the sky, still—some eddy of the breeze worked its way into their sheltered corner and lifted wisps of her hair around her face—the sunlight raked her heavy features.

It was—captivating.

It was captivating.

It was _captivating._

"Andraste was a barbarian too," Ylva said. "I listen as well as anyone else."

And the Maker spoke to Andraste when all her gods were silent—

Unease, again, for Cassandra—oh, the silence of the divine—

Ylva's face was unusually kind when she looked at Cassandra.

"Tell me a story of your own," she said.

"Of my own—"

"You have stories. You come from somewhere. You have performed notable deeds, or seen them performed. You relate these in a narrative form—"

"Yes, thank you, I am aware of what a story is. I'm afraid I am not a very interesting person. Nor am I a good storyteller. Besides, I feel certain that the dracolisk is at this moment eating something diplomatically unfortunate."

"That's true," Ylva admitted. "It would be a shame to miss the reactions."

Cassandra, thinking of the Lord of Nahashin's face upon seeing the beast standing so close to his carriage as to nearly scratch the paintwork, was overcome: impossible not to laugh at the absurdity of it all. She had quite forgotten the meat of the lecture she'd intended to deliver.

"I'll have a story from you later," Ylva said, and stood. She offered Cassandra a hand, and Cassandra, without thinking, took it. Ylva grinned; tilted her weight back until she could lift Cassandra without a great deal of input on Cassandra's own part. "Or we can make one."

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

How many things may happen in a space of months.

One may walk the Fade, moving with silent footsteps between hanging stones, surrounded by the noise of water pouring from nowhere to nowhere—suspended between faith and doubt, looking upon the face of the beloved dead and longing to believe it real. One may circle through fury and delight, one may triumph—one may stumble. One may deal with an Avvar man with unreasonably large horns on his headpiece flinging goats at a fortress, and, apparently, appoint him to a sort of ambassadorial role, possibly purely to antagonise Abernache—who deserves all antagonism he may receive, admittedly.

There is space for both the grand and the petty.

Ylva was profoundly adept, Cassandra had decided, at both.

"The Lord may try his luck at a trial if he chooses," she was saying. "Strength, perhaps? Against a _mage_ that should be nothing."

She was taller than the lord in question, and not smiling, although a glint in her eyes was discernable.

"Is that—"

"Diplomatic process? Oh, yes. Ask Ambassadors Abernache and Movran at the next ball. It's an honoured tradition."

Am I, Cassandra thought, meant to play the softening force? Oh, where _is_ Josephine—how tired she will be if another injury is sustained. And is Ylva really playing up her accent again, after all this time—

"Must you test your strength against the hapless?" Cassandra asked, rather snappishly even to her own ears, which, considering that she had been constantly told since infancy that she was unnecessarily harsh, could not be a good sign.

Ylva turned to her with eyebrows raised. The man who had been the object of Ylva's scrutiny was looking very blank—not sure whether to look relieved at her intervention or affronted at her dismissal of his chances, presumably.

"Now," he said, "I rather think—"

"I rather think that you should be quiet," Cassandra said. "And take your petty concerns through the appropriate channels instead of being such a toad. _My Lady Inquisitor_. This is not worth anyone's time. Come."

"What sort of mood is this, then?" Ylva asked, following after her. A brisk march up the steps to the training yard.

"I am merely—ugh. Do you wish to fight someone, or don't you?"

Ylva stilled. 

"I do."

"Then I will fight you. And perhaps if I win you might be persuaded to stop—" Cassandra gestured broadly, the movement quick.

"Stop?"

" _Stop._ "

Ylva did laugh then. It irritated Cassandra profoundly for a reason she actively struggled to place, and then the effort she had put into attempting to place it irritated her too.

"Bare hands," Ylva said. "No magic."

"I suppose you would prefer I also be naked and covered in mud."

"Is that what they say about us in your novels? If you like."

"It is not—yes. Maybe. I hardly see—"

"I mean," Ylva said, "it isn't untrue."

She raised a hand in deference to Cassandra's impatience—set about the business of stripping herself down to her undershirt and leggings, apparently remembering to be considerate to Josephine's sensibilities in at least this one detail and not soiling her clothes. She had abandoned her furs within the keep some time ago, but kept what seemed to be a kind of summer garb, modifying it until Josephine would permit her to leave her quarters— _like being lectured by the Augur again._

Now, she dusted her hands off; spread her arms. She was larger than Cassandra, taller and broader—the mountain people tended to those builds. And she fought with her staff as though it were a polearm, at times. Had muscle enough to pull her weight in a Hold where nothing could be taken for granted.

Cassandra, while leaner, knew very well that her strength was greater.

Ylva was not, in this sense, a warrior.

But she fought—hard tumbles, the kick of her leg throwing Cassandra just when Cassandra's hold was almost secure—the weight of her hand pressed down on Cassandra's hip. They scrapped, in truth—scrapped as Cassandra had done as a girl, running out from fine parties to pick fights with other children. She had ruined her own clothes then, hadn't she—

This is undignified, Cassandra thought, and thrilled.

Ylva's body against hers was half-soft, a layer of fat over muscle. There was a scar at the dip of her throat like a gouge from a claw—the skin grew softer below it—her face was worn with the mountain wind, the corners of her eyes held fine creases—

A final rough twist.

Ylva, pinned to the ground on her stomach with Cassandra seated across her hips, burst into breathless laughter.

" _Fuck,_ that hurt," she said, worming her arm free from Cassandra's grasp where it had been twisted behind her back. "I concede the trial. No more arm wrestling."

"Had it only been arm wrestling I would be less concerned," Cassandra said, and sat back on her heels as Ylva twisted under her—turned herself—grinned up at Cassandra with her undershirt askew and her face smeared with mud, her leggings low on her hips.

"So I can still—"

"No."

"Ah, well."

"I detest you," Cassandra said fondly, and grabbed at Ylva's elbow to support her as she made to sit up. "You are unbearable. And flirting with me again. I think. If flirting is even the word. I cannot see why you would even—"

"Lowlanders," Ylva said. Cassandra watched her mouth as it formed the word very deliberately. "Everything is so fucking complicated, isn't it."

"I do not wish to simply tumble into your bed," Cassandra snapped. "I do not—that is _not_ —"

She stood. Ylva let her—did not move to follow.

Here was the trouble, for Cassandra: she could not unsay the word _simply._ She could not even unthink it.

 

 

 

She found Ylva later on the battlements, washed and passably dressed, leaning against the parapet and staring out over the snowy mountains. They were well past the winter by then, and the river far below had thawed—but the ice would not leave the peaks around them until the end of summer, if at all. 

"It wears," Ylva said. "Life in this place. It is my Hold, and it thrives, and its Hold-Beast thrives. I am high in the mountains again, and the omens are good. And it wears."

"Why should it not?"

"Why indeed. I'm chosen, aren't I? By someone or other. I grow tired, and I am far from home—at the same time as I have no other home. And I behave poorly."

"Don't think I have no understanding for your position."

Ylva turned, shoulders to the stone. "Oh?"

"You are indeed far from home—oh, perhaps not geographically, but culturally. You compromise your ideals against mine, and Josephine's, and Leliana's, and against those of the Chantry. What you think of Cullen I cannot guess. He is terrified of you, by the way."

Ylva nodded—thoughtful, apparently.

"It is hard," Cassandra said. "I know it is hard. I know you cannot believe as I believe, however much I may—"

Frustration.

 _Andraste was a barbarian too,_ Ylva said.

Andraste in the Chantry is blank-faced, smooth-featured—she tends towards the ideal of this time period or that, this land or that. She is straight-nosed and full-lipped or thin-featured or broad, but she is always smooth and unmarred, unless a Chantry wears some later catastrophe with pride and allows its marks to remain.

Cassandra had not complicated her image of Andraste beyond this image, but now, if she should blink, a specific face would reveal itself to her, rendered iconic.

Should she open her eyes again, it would remain before her, living and sharp.

Ylva suspected the line of her thought. Had she minded it terribly, she would have done a hundred things differently since that day in the courtyard when she sang a lowland canticle in her unremarkable voice. It was foreign to her, this singular focus—and it spilled from Cassandra only in moments, until she blinked the visions from her eyes again and saw Ylva as a woman with a scar on her throat, with hair that tangled the breath it was loosed from its braids, wearing skins she had taken from the Hold of her birth, made fine by skilled craftsmen but forced through use to retain their meaning.

"The rules of this place are not the rules of my younger life," Ylva said. She shook her heaviness from her. "I learn what I must. But sometimes it helps to punch someone."

Cassandra sighed, but she smiled also. "I broke a young man's arm once because I did not care for the rules I was supposed to follow, if you must know," she said.

"What rules were those?"

"Oh, marriage—it usually is marriage, if you have the great fortune to be a Pentaghast. I was meant to wear a dress and be very kind and it was utterly, utterly unbearable." She shrugged. "No further attempts were made, at any rate."

"Nobody dared to try and take me from my Hold for a wife," Ylva said. "Well. Not really."

"Not really?"

"Never you mind. You broke someone's arm. Good."

"I'm glad it amuses you," Cassandra said, and quite genuinely was.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Here is a book: an older and heavier thing than all these appropriate editions of the Chant of Light and of orders of service and prayer, older than the volumes of dissonant verses kept in Cassandra's library. It is unassuming in its form, the cover only brown leather, certainly not from any creature more elevated than a druffalo. The cover has faded and the pages have darkened with old ink and curled with damp and now the whole is nearly of one shade; the edges are tatty besides. Here and there repairs have been made with thread. Here and there a new page has been stitched into the book, often not quite properly aligned. It is a working book. It is a secret book—too secret for any skilled bookbinder to be entrusted with its repair. It bears no sigil.

This is the book which Cassandra studied that day, in cloud-hazed summer evening sunlight, poring over it where she sat, unmoving, until her back ached and the backs of her thighs grew stiff.

"Do not," she said to Ylva without looking up. Of course it would be Ylva—who else's silences were so provocative? "You do not read. Certainly. But some of us must."

"A good book? Entertaining? Something for the fireside?"

Cassandra gestured to the grate, where a fire did in fact burn. Skyhold was mild then, but mild was relative to a Nevarran.

"Alright," Ylva said, and deposited herself heavily upon a long-suffering chair opposite Cassandra's. It creaked alarmingly at the force of her landing.

Secrets have weight, and Cassandra felt them in her hands then, pressing her palms flat to the surface of the pages.

There could be none. None like this.

"This tome has passed from Lord Seeker to Lord Seeker since the time of the old Inquisition," she said, and, with Ylva's eyes fixed upon her, she told the story. It became—easier. Why should it have become easier? It simply did.

Tranquility and its cure—at this, Ylva grew intent and still, and her anger was apparent, but she did not interrupt.

A spirit which reached down through the fade and touched Cassandra's mind.

An uncertain future.

Ylva was a good listener. This was what they did, of course—what Ylva did. She listened to stories. And she remembered them.

No page and no ink.

It felt precarious to Cassandra all the same—of course stories were passed down—but without a book—

Ylva would have laughed at her had she said it, and rightly: a hand-written book may be changed or burnt as well as a fireside story may be reworked or discarded. And the people who held a book in their hands were perhaps less careful in the remembering of its words, with their security in having an original to return to—pointless thoughts—the scattered attention of a mind which did not want to focus on the salient point. Was afraid to.

"Do you know," Ylva said, "how we train our mages?"

"No," Cassandra said.

"That's the right answer. Nobody would tell a Lowlander."

Cassandra watched Ylva carefully.

"I'm going to tell _you_ , though," Ylva said. "We'll see if I live. If my people live! A fine adventure."

"You are very alarming, you are aware?"

Ylva flicked her eyes skyward: of _course_ she knew. 

"You became empty, and a spirit filled you with yourself," Ylva said. "We are the opposite in some sense, but also not unalike. When I was found to have magic in me, a spirit was invited to share in it. I never left myself—the spirit came to me, as I was, whole."

"You mean possession," Cassandra said, and she was truly alarmed: it was unconcealed, but Ylva would have assumed it regardless.

"Possession is a betrayal," Ylva said. "A refusal to let go by one part or another. I am speaking of a contract. An apprenticeship. I was taught, and we parted ways as friends. Of a sort."

Cassandra stood. Abrupt, as she often was. Unsteady, which was rare. Went to the window.

"You already know why we don't tell Lowlanders. Going to call an Exalted March on the Frostbacks?"

"I am hardly the Divine. Nobody is, in fact."

"And that's the best reason you have," Ylva said.

"It is a lot—I hardly—"

"Cassandra," Ylva said, and the use of her given name was enough to startle Cassandra all over again, quite apart from the severity with which it was spoken. It was enough to make her half-turn, outlined against the panes.

"Yes?"

"I won't tell you what to do with your Seekers," Ylva said. "But I'm telling you this. If you think you can draw firm lines between this thing and that, you will always struggle. If you fear spirits because they may harm you, they will be harmful. Write those words in your god-book. They'll keep you alive."

"That is not—"

Ylva's turn, then, to stand.

"I have tried to learn what I can of you," she said, and her voice was harsh. "Learn what you can of me."

Danger in both of them, sharp and present. In both of them, fear. 

"Consider it," Ylva said. "Or am I a barbarian idiot to you after all?"

 

 

 

Andraste was Alamarri. Consider this, Cassandra thought, with unease: consider the twining of beings into single entities. Consider what meaning may be placed upon being a bride—

Her world was already too splintered to hold the idea and retain its form, and so it must be cast aside, removed from the image of Kirkwall burning, or from other moments: from blood on the ground and abominations and a body, a body, a body— 

Her thoughts skittered again—

But lines—there was something—

She trod the stairs to the Inquisitor's rooms with caution—need not have, as the door was open.

"Do I have to invite you?" Ylva called.

"When people have argued, it is traditional not to presume," Cassandra said, and felt the stiff formality of the words in the whole of her body. A wooden puppet clunked its way up the final stairs and into the room which could now best be described as an aerie: cluttered with tools and with materials and fine things what pleased Ylva's eye, arranged in a way far too chaotic to be contained under the heading of _bedroom_.

"Is that what it was?"

"I believe so—?"

"This is the Exalted March, then," Ylva said. "Come to crush resistance."

"That joke is in very poor taste. And no. It is your idiotic friend, come to offer you a drink."

" _Friend_ ," Ylva said. "Hmm."

"What word would you prefer?"

"That depends," Ylva said, with sly gravity. "Have you considered?"

"I have considered. And I have written it in my book. I may always remove it, of course. But it is there."

Ylva's act of gravity dissolved at once. It might never have existed. It might all have been play. "You see," she said with laughter in the corners of her mouth. "Listen to me, and you might just survive."

When she kissed Cassandra, it was hard—the scrape of teeth, scrambling hands. This is a story, so we may say that the bottle Cassandra had carried so carefully fell—we may say that it was forgotten.

Or else we may admit that it was placed to one side, and also that it was remembered, but not until several hours later.


End file.
